Maarten Rots

Born 1982 in Aalten, the Netherlands
Lives and works in Diemen, the Netherlands

Maarten Rots (1982) graduated from the audio visual department VAV of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2010. He sources reality for his photographic and video works, without staging situations. Determined that beauty can be found anywhere he utilizes the city as a source of moments and situations to capture with his camera. His work is characterized by a degree of abstraction in which architecture plays an important role and his love for graphic shapes often shows in his compositions.

The series of photographs that Rots presents at QLICK Editions during his solo exhibition ‘This Side Up’ is a result of his fascination for the abstract qualities of the play between light, shadow and architecture, in which properties like transparency, texture and reflection are important ingredients. Many of these pictures have a painterly quality, emphasized even more by the prints on Hahnemühle German Etching paper.

Rots: “I have a strong need to see and capture the world around me. I search for the surreal beauty in reality that can only exist when I push the shutter release button. With that push of the button I have given it a place to exist in the world.

My photographic work always starts by wandering around, roaming the streets with my camera without a destination in mind. By using reflections and transparency, I capture multiple layers in a single exposure to construct an abstract and textured representation of reality. I love to play with shapes and lines that I find around me in architectural elements in urban surroundings; they are the building blocks for my compositions. Their original meaning and context becomes secondary — it’s their form, their silhouette that attracts me. The reflective surfaces that I often use to capture these compositions are generally textured by the weather; I really like how this blurs the line between a photograph and a drawing / painting.”

During a one week period I will stay at Kunsthuis Kaayk in Tiel, The Netherlands, and photograph the direct surroundings of the space, which will lead to a daily selection of images. After one week of producing the results will be on display in the gallery

July 5- 17 2015 – Solo show Siting: Qlick Editions. During a one week period I will stay at QLICK Editions and photograph the direct surroundings of the space, which will lead to a daily selection of images. After one week of producing the results will be on display in the gallery for another week